Electronic mail (email) communications are an integral part of any business, and widely used outside of business as well. Although several new technologies currently compete, as the most ubiquitous tool in business communications, email remains one of the single most used communications tools for both the business and the personal user. Widespread availability, ease of use, and functionality are key components which hold email in front of developing communications methods; however, as new technologies compete for the top spot, email applications must continue to build upon the strong foundation currently in place to maintain their edge as the tool of choice. By any current standard, email applications would have to be rated as mature technology; however, if improvements in email applications cease to move forward, and other tools continue to improve, loss of market share will undoubtedly result.
Because email communications are widely used in many activities inside and outside of the business world, ease of use and best of breed functionality are imperative in modern email systems. Many user interface enhancements have been added to email systems over the past several years; however, room for improvement continues to exist.
One such email enhancement has been the return receipt notification sent to the initiator/sender of an email message verifying the receipt of the email message at the destination location. In a conventional paper mail context, return receipts provide valuable information to senders of mail. With the return receipt, the sender can verify that the intended recipient received the mail where otherwise the sender would have to rely on, for example, contacting the recipient directly to confirm that the mail was received. Similarly, in an electronic mail context, return receipts are available to provide the sender of an electronic mail message some feedback as to the status of their electronic mail message. For example, the electronic mail message return receipt may provide information such as if the electronic mail message was received, opened or deleted unread.
One current shortfall in legacy email systems is the lack of flexibility with respect to return receipt behavior. Today, virtually all electronic mail applications place a new and separate “return receipt message” into the in-box of the message sender upon reading of the delivered message by each individual remote recipient, which, particularly in the case of a large delivery audience, may not be a desirable behavior.
Legacy return receipt behavior causes many busy professionals to spend untold time reading, compiling, and deleting a host of individual return receipts within their mailboxes. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method for improving the shortcomings of the conventional electronic mail return receipt procedures. It would also be desirable to provide a method that would eliminate the large volume of return receipt messages that are collected at the message sender end, which creates the need to spend valuable time sorting, reviewing and deleting these return receipt messages.